The World Without Us - Thoughts for Earth Day

I walked down the street to get take-out food tonight for the Wednesday Canadian Kitchen Party in support of Canadian restaurants (it’s happening again next week on Facebook, with some well-known Canadian musicians - join if you can). It was at the end of what would normally be rush hour, and it was eerie. There were few cars and fewer pedestrians. I could hear leaves rustling along the street, papers flapping on a construction site and even the sounds of bicycle chains against the gears as cyclists went by. There were lots of bird songs on a street where birds are rarely heard (though over the years I have spotted a woodpecker and a sharpshinned hawk). The sky was clear.

It got me thinking about The World Without Us, by Alan Weisman. It’s a frightening but beautiful exploration of the earth’s recuperative powers after various disasters that take humans out of the equation. As I work towards next steps for my own staff, and for development assistance programming in hard-hit countries, I wonder how many of Weisman’s predictions will turn out to be valid. Carbon dioxide emissions are predicted to drop by 6 percent this year. Sea turtle hat hings are up. Animals are bolder in the cities and suburban areas. Smog is way down in places like New Delhi, Jakarta, and parts of China. The canals of Venice appear cleaner because there is no boat traffic to churn up the pollutants.

Will it all last? Probably not forever, but I think some things may have changed for good. It will take a very long time for the cruise ship and airline industries to recover (if they ever do). Tourists will be much more reluctant in future to travel to exotic places where they may need to shelter in place with no way to get home during a crisis. Many of us have gotten very comfortable with working from home. It turns out that international meetings once requiring people to fly to from across the world can actually work reasonably well via video conference. So our carbon footprint from travel is likely to drop. We are buying a lot less and discovering that’s okay. We’re eating out less and learning to cook. Both of those things will also be better for the planet, although retail industries will be hard-hit, and there will be a lot more waste from shipping goods and take-out foods (not to mention the end of reusable bags at the grocery store). And I have no idea what this pandemic will do to the global population. Aside from COVID-19 itself (great explanations can be found here), there is hunger caused by closed borders, undemployment, and the usual natural disasters according to the WPF.

Time to re-read The World Without Us.